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On September 4, 2002, Ron Greenwald brought Paul Fritzler to the Larry Bohlender’s CIC office to visit about a project Ron was concerned about. As Paul related the history of this piece of equipment his father had built, Ron and Larry realized they were listening to history that should be preserved and Connie Kevorkian joined them to record the conversation. We believe it is an important piece of the entrepreneurial history that survived from the Volga region to Weld County. Here is the interview with longtime AHSGR member Paul Fritzler. Paul’s parents grew up in "the old country" as neighbors, following in the footsteps of several generations of wheat farmers in the Village of Grimm, Russia. His father, Fred Fritzler, was one of the first members of the family to immigrate to America and, over the years, he shared many memories with Paul.

Fred was born into a large family in this farming community in 1883, a large family of eleven brothers and several sisters. At that time the formula for land distribution to the families was called the mir system. The German colonists called it the Dusch method since the land assignments were based on the ducha, the Russian word for "soul." Therefore the settlers called mir land Seelenland – "soul land". (The Russians were alleged to have said women had no souls, hence were not entitled to land shares under the mir. From the Volga Germans by Koch page 70) Thus about every 10 years all the land assigned to the village was redistributed only to males, regardless of age or physical fitness. It is worth noting these plots of land were not necessarily adjoining and some times were not in close proximity for the family. The families lived in the village and went to the fields every day during the growing season.